


I come up hard but now I'm cool

by fannishliss



Series: Peggy/Steve/Bucky OT3 [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Returns, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Captain America: The First Avenger, Historical Accuracy, Howard is annoying but not a bad guy, Multi, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Peggy and Bucky look for Steve, Pseudoscience, but there are hints, here and there at least, of course they do!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 17:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2278221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to Captain America: The First Avenger -- Bucky is found alive just before Steve crashes into the ocean.  Bucky and Peggy, together, refuse to stop looking until Steve is found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I come up hard but now I'm cool

**title: I come up hard but now I'm cool**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)**fannishliss**  
rating: PG  
warnings: none I can think of  
pairing: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Peggy Carter ot3

summary: Alternate ending to Captain America: The First Avenger -- Bucky is found alive just before Steve crashes into the ocean.  Bucky and Peggy, together, refuse to stop looking until Steve is found.

This is part 4 of my [Steve/Bucky/Peggy ot3](http://archiveofourown.org/series/133617).  You don't necessarily have to read the others to read this one, and the ot3 is background in this story -- nothing explicit.

more notes at the end.  
=====

"There' s got to be another way -- we’ll find a pilot to talk you through the landing,” Peggy begged.

"Can't," Steve said shortly.  "No telling what these bombs might do -- crashing them into the ocean is the only choice."

"There's got to be--" Peggy began, but choked back her reply when she realized she was only repeating herself.

"Peggy -- it's -- " Steve coughed, trying to keep it together.  "Millions of lives hang in the balance, here, Peggy.  I can't take that kind of chance with my own hometown, you know that."

"Steve, there's -- there's something you should know." Peggy was crying now, Steve could hear it in her voice.

"I know already," Steve reassured her.  They'd promised themselves to each other; he already knew he had the love of the best woman he'd ever known -- the best man too, until --

"Bucky's alive."

Peggy's words across the staticky radio felt like Arctic waters dashing against Steve ahead of schedule.  She couldn’t have said what he thought she’d said.

"What?” he managed to reply.   Once, he’d been nearly deaf in one ear — the serum had fixed all that. He strained his new ears now, concentrating on Peggy’s voice in the noisy cockpit.

"We just got word, Steve -- Sergeant Barnes is alive and safe in Allied territory. Forward patrols retrieved him from the location just where you said he’d be.”

"Alive?" Steve couldn't help the tears that sprang into his eyes.

"Unconscious, and in critical condition, but somehow -- he's alive, Steve."

"Peggy --"

"I'm so sorry I had to give you the news under these circumstances," Peggy said.

"No.  No, I'm -- it's good.” Steve’s mind whirled, trying to make sense of the impossibility.  The chasm Bucky had fallen into was so deep, so icy and desolate, that no one could have survived — or Steve might almost have thrown aside his mission and jumped after his best friend.  But too many lives were at stake — not even giving Steve enough time to go after Bucky’s body himself.    “I saw him fall, Peggy,” he said helplessly.

"I know." Peggy had mourned with him after his return alone to England — just one night of mourning before the showdown with Schmidt and now, one more suicide mission.

"How could he have survived?" Steve wondered.  His emotions were a maelstrom: his soul-deep grief at Bucky’s loss struggled to keep its claws in him against the strange, bitter joy at the idea that Bucky might really be alive after all --

"Brooklyn boys are just that tough, I reckon," Peggy replied.

Steve laughed. It was that or sob. He struggled to breathe, even though the asthma that had choked him his whole life was no longer a problem.

"You promised me that dance, Peggy  -- you better keep your promise," Steve said.

Peggy and Steve and Bucky had all promised -- to stay together always, no matter what.

"I will, Steve," Peggy said.

"When he wakes up -- tell him -- " Steve choked again. There was no way he could say what he felt over the radio, even if he could have put his love for Bucky into words.

"I'll tell him," Peggy promised.

Hell had never looked like an ocean frozen over, till now.

"Peggy -- I'm sorry -- "

"I know."

He kept her words in his heart, along with her promise to him and to Bucky, until the plane hit the thick raft of snow and ice floating on the ocean's surface.  The nose hit first, breaking through the ice, and the cabin filled with water.  Steve fought to stay conscious against the shock of impact and the crushing influx of frigid water, but it wasn't the first time in his life he'd lost a fight.

\---

Bucky screamed as pain surged into him; his whole left side, and especially his left shoulder, burned like fire.

"Sedate this man, nurse, god damn it!"

"I'm trying, Mr. Stark, but he keeps waking up! If I give him any more morphine --"

"If you give him more, he might stop screaming! Now, do it!"

A hazy softness spread like a wool blanket between him and the pain.

"Barnes, 32557038," he murmured.

"You're safe here, Barnes," he heard, but with the pain he was in, he didn't exactly believe it.

\---

Bucky opened his eyes again.  The bright lights of the operating theater were gone, but he was surrounded by machines he didn't recognize.  The pain was still intense, but more of a bone-deep ache. The fiery edges of the pain were maybe dulled a little by the morphine.

His throat was so dry, so sore, it felt like it had been torn to shreds.  He tried to call for water, but only a hoarse gasp came out.

He tried to lift his hand to beckon someone, but he met with resistance. Why was he strapped down?

Panicking, he thrashed against the bonds, and the left side gave way immediately.

He reached across to unstrap his right arm, and that's when he saw it -- like -- like something out of a crazy space adventure -- some kind of robot arm -- he froze, terrified, and it froze with him -- it was his own arm!

What had they done to him?

Who had done it?

Hydra?  Was he trapped in a Hydra base?

Last time, it had been much worse -- strapped to a table, not a bed, and in a much nastier room, and without the soldier's joy of morphine.

Bucky tried to think through the panic.  They'd given him a robot arm.  That was good, that was a weapon, maybe he could use that.

He finally worked the strap open on the right side.  The robot arm did what he wanted it to, strong but clumsy.  Sitting up made him lightheaded and dizzy, but somehow he got the straps off his feet as well.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and tried to lower himself to the floor.  He felt terribly weak, but wherever he was, he wasn't going down without a fight.

A nurse, dressed properly as a British army nurse in a khaki uniform and veil, came in with a clipboard.  Her name tag read “Chambers.”

"Sergeant Barnes, you shouldn't be up!" she addressed him sharply. It was English, but Bucky wasn’t ready to stand down.

"Where am I?" Bucky rasped, his voice still not serving him well.

"You're in England," she reassured him. "You're safe. But I must insist you lie back down."

"Where's Steve -- Captain Rogers? -- my C.O.?"  Bucky whispered as the nurse carefully tucked him back into bed.

The nurse — a lieutenant by her stripes, just Bucky’s luck to be outranked by the nurses — looked at her clipboard. Her eyes widened, but her voice gave away nothing. “These orders say to alert Agent Carter of the SSR when you regain consciousness.  She’s been in to check on you several times;  I’ll have her wired right away.”

Bucky leaned back against his pillow and closed his eyes.  The last time he’d seen Steve, he’d been falling off a train.  There was no way to know if Steve was alive or dead.  But as Steve’s handpicked fighting unit, the Howling Commandos were a multinational group of volunteers fighting Hydra outside the normal chain of command, under the auspices of the Allied Forces Strategic Scientific Reserve.  Peggy was their liaison, but Steve was the first to be notified if anything happened to any of them.  His papers should reflect that, unless contacting Steve was no longer possible.

“Tell Agent Carter I’m awake and raising hell,” Bucky sighed.

“How is your pain, dear?” Sister Chambers asked, a little more gently.

“I’ll live,” Bucky said, the fiery burn of his missing arm nothing to the ache of missing Steve.

—

“Hey soldier,” a familiar voice called out.

The sweet voice and familiar British accent weren’t enough to coax Bucky to respond.  If he opened his eyes, he’d see Peggy. If he saw Peggy, that meant no Steve.  And no Steve — Bucky couldn’t face it.  So he played dead.

He heard the click of her heels across the wood floor of  the hospital room.

“Lt. Chambers tells me you’ve been raising hell,” Peggy said gently.

Gently was bad.  Gently meant the worst.

“Don’t tell me,” he whispered.  “Please.  Just don’t say it.”

Peggy’s soft hand, soft where it wasn’t calloused from her practice with her sidearm, caressed his hair back from his forehead. How long had he been under, that his hair had grown so long?

“He’s listed as missing,” she said softly, but her voice was too steady.

Too gentle, and way too steady.

“Get me back on my feet, and I won’t stop until I find him.”

“He was on a plane that went down in the ocean,” Peggy said.  “We dispatched boats, but couldn’t find anything.”

“Ain’t you got any fly boys?” Bucky demanded.  “Tell ‘em to keep looking.”

Peggy paused for a moment.  “Howard would have gone, but if boats couldn’t find him, Bucky, he’s not to be found.”

“I don’t buy it,” Bucky denied.  “Steve’s not the kind of kid who stays down.  You wouldn’t believe him, lemme tell ya, you think he’s down and he just keeps gettin’ back up.”

Peggy sighed, and tried to change the topic.  “With Steve … missing, the Commandos are temporarily reassigned.  Dernier’s gone back to the resistance, Jones, Dugan and Morita have gone back to the 107th, and Falsworth — well, this is his house, actually.”

“What?”   Bucky looked around at the room a little more closely and saw that behind the medical equipment, the room was spacious, with tall windows, fine moldings, and elegant (if faded) wallpaper.  “Falsie owns this joint?”

Peggy nodded.  “We may still have our outmoded feudal system,” Peggy smiled, “but even a landed lord must fight alongside the common man when duty calls. He volunteered his estate to house soldiers suffering from battle shock.”

Memories flooded over Bucky.  Falsworth’s posh accent had been the butt of jokes but he’d laughed along with the rest of them and never complained about the terrible conditions on the front — any more than any of them.   Steve liked to draw anyone who would listen into an argument over the merits of socialism— his mother had been a card-carrying member of the Communist party — but neither Peggy nor Falsworth would allow themselves to be drawn in, and Bucky didn’t care about politics.  He’d had enough to worry about getting work enough to keep Steve alive, without arguing about the necessity of trade unions or the rise of the proletariat.

“Peggy,” Bucky insisted.  “We can’t give up.  We’ve got to find him. That serum — lord knows what it might do.  He could still be alive out there, trapped in some kind of suspended animation.” Horror scenarios from the pulps he’d devoured for years filled Bucky’s imagination. “We gotta go after him. He really could be alive — you know?  You’ve seen it yourself, the things he can do, the way he heals up so fast.”

Peggy’s brown eyes were sad, but as Bucky spoke he saw her regain her determination.

“Actually, I think you may have a point.  Without proof that Steve is dead, we can’t allow ourselves to give up. Plus, the serum makes his recovery a strategic imperative.  I should have insisted that the search continue, but you know how the brass feel about my ‘emotional involvement.’”

“They should know you a damn sight better than to question your judgment,” Bucky avowed.

“Thanks, Buck,” Peggy said.  She listened carefully a moment, to be sure they were alone, then leaned in to share a kiss with Bucky.  The sweet press of her lips, her familiar perfume, were such a comfort, Bucky didn’t want to let her go.

“I got to get back on my feet,” Bucky swore. “I got to back you up until we find Steve.”

“I’ll call Howard right away,” Peggy said. “Oh!” she exclaimed, blushing deeply, eyes darting to Bucky’s new robot arm.  “I’m sorry — about — I hope it doesn’t hurt?”

“It hurts,” Bucky admitted.

“Oh, Bucky,” Peggy sighed, tears springing to her eyes.  “I hope — Howard made the new arm for you.  He says it’s the best thing he’s ever made.”

“Is it —“ Bucky blanched a little, but pressed forward. “Is it  — does it seem — horrible?”

“No!” Peggy said, shocked.  “Bucky— it’s beautiful.  I mean to say, I know it must be a terrible shock that your own arm is gone, but the silver one — it’s really beautiful.  It is.”

“Thanks, doll,” Bucky said, partially reassured that at least his lover wasn’t repulsed by the new arm.   It was amazing, he couldn’t deny, when the arm moved and the fingers flexed without any more conscious effort on Bucky’s part than his old arm would have needed. Slowly, he touched his thumb to each of his finger tips, listening to the muted whirring as the arm moved about.

“It’s beautiful,” Peggy breathed.

“Is this gonna be a ‘thing’ with you, doll?” Bucky smiled.

“Everything about you is a ‘thing’ with me, Sergeant Barnes,” Peggy purred.  “Now, get some rest while I get SSR search teams back on the job looking for Steve.”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.” Bucky gave Peggy a proper salute with his right hand, and before she left, Peggy impulsively seized his metal hand, kissing the fingers.  Bucky wiggled them thoughtfully, as her crisp stride echoed down the hallway.  He could almost feel the lingering imprint of her lips.

—

Bucky quickly regained his strength. He was surprised to learn that he’d lost nearly three weeks — he’d been found nearly dead in the Alps, rushed back to England, and kept sedated while the new arm was grafted on.

Stark came around frequently to check on the arm.

“I wanted to make it more easily detachable,” he said, “but it’s too heavy, it needs to be securely anchored in the shoulder.”

Bucky shuddered, still more than a little horrified at the thing that had been made a part of him while they tried to keep him unconscious.  Peggy had signed his consent form as Steve’s superior officer, and he trusted her judgment, but it still seemed a little suspect to him that Stark and Peggy hadn’t at least asked him.  Bucky forgave Peggy, knowing that SSR, by its very nature, was science forward, and Bucky knew Peggy regarded the arm as the greatest scientific wonder the world had ever seen, only second to the serum that had transformed Steve. Stark, though, stared at Bucky and the arm a little too avidly with his sparkling brown eyes and bright grin.  He was a tinkerer by nature and loved experimentation for its own sake. Bucky didn’t trust him one hundred percent.

“Ow!” Bucky shouted as Stark made a minute adjustment inside an open panel.

“Oh!  You felt that? Good, excellent!” Stark replied.  “They said the neural interface would never take, I told them I could make it work.  This is amazing.”

“Doesn’t feel too fucking amazing,” Bucky grumbled.

Stark ignored him, tinkering and adjusting things.  Now that Bucky was prepared, the little zings that traveled up the metal arm into his shoulder weren’t that bad, but they came at random intervals, feeling more and more like torture as they went on.

Sister Chambers came in to fill in Bucky’s chart and administer his penicillin injection. She took his temperature, listened to his heart and lungs with her stethoscope, and read his blood pressure.

“Everything sounds good, temperature is normal, but your blood pressure is elevated,” she said.  “How is your pain?”

“Okay,” Bucky admitted, but he couldn’t help darting a glance at Stark.  “Ow!” he exclaimed loudly as another zing shot into his shoulder.

“Mr. Stark, I’m going to have to ask you to finish up for today,” the nurse said sternly.

“What? I just got started!” Stark objected.

“You signed in at a quarter past nine this morning,” the nurse pointed out on Bucky’s chart.  “It’s nearly one in the afternoon, and it’s past time for Sergeant Barnes to eat his dinner.”

The meals in the hospital were provided by Falsworth’s own staff, so they were nothing to complain about, even taking wartime rationing into account. Bucky had never eaten so well, since his own childhood back in Brooklyn.  Fresh eggs, cheese and butter, and delicious whole milk from the estate’s own dairy cows made every meal a feast.

“Oh, well then, wouldn’t want to keep a guy away from his hospital food,” Stark said.  He made one more adjustment, and snapped the service hatch closed.  The flakes of armor on the arm automatically recalibrated around the hatch with a weird whir; Bucky had to admit he was a little worried that the arm would get up to missions of its own devising while he was asleep.

“Shake,” Stark demanded.

Bucky put out his right hand.

“No, the other one!” Stark said, eyes wide and expectant.

Bucky put out the metal hand, and Stark shook it, squeezing hard.

Bucky went to return the firm handshake, when he realized that Stark had somehow awakened the sensation of pressure in his artificial left hand.

“Huh? Huh?” Stark asked.

“You’re an asshole, but you’re a brilliant asshole,” Bucky said,  hiding a grin.

Stark punched him in the arm — the left arm — and he felt it, just a little.  Bucky went to dinner feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.

—

Peggy joined Bucky for tea.  She served, reminding Bucky painfully of the lovely afternoons the three of them had spent in her brother’s flat near Covent Garden, laughing, dancing, making plans, making love in their stolen moments of downtime together.

“I’ve managed to convince SSR that we need to find Steve, but we still don’t have the resources we need,” Peggy complained.  “It’s a big ocean.”

“We can’t give up,” Bucky reiterated.

“How soon will you be on your feet?” she asked.

“Ask Stark — it’s his orders keeping me here.”

Bucky’s physical recovery was complete, but Stark was still tinkering with the arm.

“Every day we don’t find Steve is one day too many,” Peggy said, frustrated.

“You know it, doll,” Bucky agreed.

“I’ll talk to Howard,” Peggy said.  “How would you like to learn to fly a plane?”

Bucky’s eyes lit up.

—

“I didn’t know you were going to be my instructor!” Bucky shouted.

“Who else?” Stark laughed.  “This is the stick.  Don’t push it all the way in.”

Once Bucky got over the aggravation of working with Stark,  he was actually a very good teacher.  He taught Bucky with high expectations which Bucky was determined to exceed. Rapidly, Bucky learned enough to ace his flight exam, make his solo flight, and obtain his license.  Amazing things could be achieved with a motivated student, a private instructor, his own plane, and SSR brass pushing him through.

To Bucky’s surprise, Peggy already had an aviator’s license. It was part of her privileged upbringing that she didn’t like to bring to too much attention.

Together, Bucky and Peggy flew to a remote airfield in Iceland without incident, joining SSR’s search for Steve, making it their number one priority.  Bucky could feel Steve frowning at him in his sleep, wondering how he and Peggy could leave the fight against the Nazis to the rest of the Allies, but Bucky, in his somnolent stubbornness, knew that even while Hydra had been decapitated, more heads would grow back soon enough, and that made finding Steve his most important mission.

Every day that passed without finding Steve hurt a little more.  Peggy and Bucky took comfort in each other, just as they had sworn to do while Steve was still with them — but the grief and pain grew harder and harder to shake.  Peggy was steel, full of grim determination, and more than willing to throw away her promising career with SSR by devoting herself to finding Steve.  Bucky felt helplessness and sadness threatening to overtake him, and he turned to rage, refusing to let the stupidity of the blank ocean surface cover over Steve’s death.  He simply refused.  Steve was his mission now, and he would not be diverted.

Allied submarines that had passed through the area where the plane might have gone down reported no sightings of wreckage.  This meant nothing to Bucky, as the Titanic had also gone down in icy waters.  It was there somewhere and it would be found.

Bucky dreamed he was on board one of those submarines — the ping of the sonar filling his ears as it bounced back from things known and unknown, sounding out a dark and murky world with invisible bell-like ripples, like the song of Steve’s shield as he threw it, as it veered and dove like a falcon in jesses and obediently returned to his arm.

He opened his eyes.  It was just after three in the morning.

“Peggy,” he whispered.

“What?” she said, instantly alert.

“Get on the horn to Stark — I know how to find Steve.”

—

Stark was incandescent when Bucky told him his idea.  “Yes! For a grunt, your brain is not half bad!”

Bucky gritted his teeth and smiled.  If Stark could find Steve, Bucky would bless every one of his irksome qualities for the rest of his life.

It took Stark less than twelve hours to install a modified radar array in the nose of Peggy and Bucky’s plane.

“Barnes’s idea is genius,” Stark ranted.  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it! The frequency is absolutely unique — allowing us to focus the radar  — just listen for the ping, and you’ll have him.”

“For luck,” Peggy said, giving Bucky a good thorough smooch.

Barnes crossed himself on Steve’s behalf (the Barneses were Presbyterians but that didn’t matter to Bucky).

The new radar array allowed them to cover a lot more ground.  They’d been in the air for about three hours, and were toward the northern end of their search pattern, when Peggy saw it.  A faint, but very real blip on the radar screen Stark had installed.

“Bucky! Bucky, look! Oh Bucky!” Peggy was overcome.  He’d never seen Peggy let her emotions get the best of her, but at the first sight of hope in weeks, she couldn’t contain herself.

He himself was in knots.  Finding Steve meant learning for sure that he was dead — or possibly, hope against hope, somehow miraculously alive.  If anyone could come back time after time from the brink of death, it was Steven Grant Rogers.  He’d done it since his very first day, coming into the world cold and blue, and Bucky prayed with all his might that somehow, he’d do it again.

—

Bucky settled the plane lightly on the thick sheet of ice.  Their plane was built for long reconnaissance and was mostly fuel tank.

The massive hulk of the flying wing, that Hydra had filled with bombs and aimed at New York City, reared up from the ice floe like a behemoth, frosted over with a heavy layer of ice and snow that had hidden it from above.

Bucky radio’d the location to Stark, who cheered and assured them that he would have boats and planes converge on the area as soon as possible, but they had no desire to wait for backup.  So close to Steve, they couldn’t wait a second longer to find him— and learn what hope fate had in store.

Peggy, as the lighter person, led the way across the chunky field of ice, and behind her followed Bucky, roped together in case the ice gave way. They were carrying ice axes and packs with emergency gear — anything they could think of that might help Steve, including cans of Sterno, K rations, blankets,  a packet of Steve’s favorite biscuits, and a thermos of tea.

Entering the downed plane was dreadful.  Hydra’s bombs, that Steve had sacrificed everything to destroy, still lined the hold.  The silence inside the plane was an eerie contrast to the roaring wind outside.  Every so often the ice would creak like thunder under the plane, terrifying Bucky every time. 

Peggy and Bucky carefully picked their way to the cockpit, afraid of what they might find, but nonetheless, desperate to know for sure.

The cockpit had been submerged at some point but was now above the water line.  It was a solid block of ice.  Peggy covered her mouth with her hands while Bucky shined the strong beam of his flashlight into the ice.

“Peggy,” he whispered.  “Look there.”

Dimly, through the ice, they could make out the iconic pattern of Steve’s shield, and behind it, the crouching form of their beloved Captain.

—

It was hours before Stark could arrive with a transport plane big enough to haul the men  and equipment needed to remove the chunk of ice from the cockpit.  They’d asked numerous doctors what to do if they succeeded in finding Steve’s frozen body —they were advised to let it thaw slowly, to allow the serum to take effect.   It was excruciating to wait, and gruesome to watch the chunk of ice with Steve inside it being hauled on a sledge to be loaded onto the transport.

Stark was generous enough to fly Bucky and Peggy’s little plane home so that they wouldn’t have to leave the frozen Steve alone on the transport plane.

Bucky sat in a paratrooper’s seat, cradling Steve’s shield, tapping it with his metal hand.  The shield sang sweetly — just as it had when Stark’s specially modified radar array sought out the frequency of vibranium, unique in all the world.

“Hear that, Steve?” Bucky thought.  “Maybe you can hear that, in your sleep.  Maybe the sound of your shield will sink deep into your dreams and wake you up. All I’m saying is, come back to us, Stevie. I ain’t nothing without you.  Come home.”

—

A pleasant spring day, an airy room, and a ballgame playing on the radio — the Dodgers playing some other team, Bucky didn’t really care who.

That was when Steve finally opened his eyes.

“Bucky?” he croaked.

Bucky yelled out the door for the nurse to ring Peggy, then practically threw himself onto the bed, kissing Steve with everything he had.

Steve kissed him back, laughing and crying all at once.

“I thought you were dead,” Steve whispered.

Bucky gave him a drink of water.  “I could just push you right back into the Arctic Ocean, you little punk — crashing your plane like that!” Bucky chided, but he knew the grin on his face was as broad as daylight.

“How’d you find me?” Steve wanted to know.

“Stark modified the radar and we homed in on the vibranium of your shield,” Bucky said.

“Bucky — your arm,” Steve said, eyes wide.

“Oh.  Oh yeah.  Stark made that too.”  Bucky hung his head a little, letting his bangs fall across his eyes.  With all the excitement he’d neglected the barber for a while now.

“It - it’s gorgeous.  Wow!” Steve said, smiling.  “You’re a miracle!”

Bucky couldn’t stop grinning.  Steve was awake, and so, so beautiful.  “You’re a miracle, punk!”

“No, you are!”  Steve retorted, stubborn as ever.

The two of them laughed and jostled each other until the Dodgers made a home run, and Peggy walked in, and they all fell into each other’s arms all over again.

Together, they could take on whatever the future might bring.

\-----

**Author's Note:**

> Author's notes:
> 
> Bucky's robot arm. I wondered what robots Bucky would know. Of course the robot woman from Metropolis. And of course Tik Tok from Ozma of Oz (my favorite). And probably there were robots in comic books and in serials like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. And I bet Steve would have read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein aloud to Bucky at some point -- or made Bucky read it to him. :) 
> 
> A nurse, dressed properly as a British army nurse in a khaki uniform and veil -- British Army Nurses are amazing. [http://www.qaranc.co.uk/qa_world_war_two_nursing.php ](http://www.qaranc.co.uk/qa_world_war_two_nursing.php%C2%A0) Basically this whole article is worth reading. :)
> 
> Steve’s handpicked fighting unit -- this is my headcanon about the chain of authority over Steve, or lack thereof. Essentially, the SSR got Steve from the US Army, then the Army pawned him off onto the USO, then SSR took him back again. The Army only had him during basic -- the rest of the time, he basically reported to Peggy and did what he wanted. Lucky for Steve.
> 
> Penicillin. It turns out that penicillin was in fact Erskine's miracle super drug -- invented during WW2 and used to treat soldiers who underwent amputations. I had kind of wondered.
> 
> Falsworth's estate -- this is based on reality -- soldiers with battle shock were sent to psychiatric hospitals in secret locations around England, primarily repurposed estates. I read somewhere that Falsworth had a title, so I went with it. Will credit if that is a fan idea!!
> 
> Steve's mom as a communist. I've read other stories where the Rogerses are socialists, but I think in the 20s she may as well have been a full-on communist. I'll cite this great story by Togina, which is a little bit crack, but pretty well-grounded in history anyway --  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/2049660 
> 
> Sterno -- common by WW2
> 
> K rations -- the kind used by the air force, and therefore, possibly more common near airfields?
> 
> Barneses as Presbyterians. My family members who are named Barnes were Scots Presbyterians and very stalwart protestants. With the name James Buchanan Barnes, I am saying Bucky was Scottish. But I'm not gonna fight about it. :)
> 
> Finding the vibranium with radar. Who's to say?? Vibranium has mysterious properties!! Pseudo science rocks!!
> 
> Title is from "Trouble Man," by Marvin Gaye. Thanks so much Sam, excellent rec!!


End file.
